Social Data Provider Gnip Debuts Partner Program to Get Companies "Plugged In To Gnip"

Today Boulder, CO-based social media data provider Gnip announced the launch of its Plugged In To Gnip partner program, which gives partner companies access to new data sources and features, and will lead to features designed specifically for those partners. The company, which announced in September that it was only the third organization in Twitter’s history to get access to the full archive of public Tweets dating back to 2006, is launching the partner program with 14 companies including IBM, Splunk, and Infochimps.

While companies like Radian6, now part of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud, and Marketwire’s Sysomos social media analytics product are helping companies directly monitor their brand presence online, Gnip takes a different approach, working with companies like IBM to build social analytics into their own business intelligence products. Typically Gnip partners with social media analytics and business intelligence platforms, who in turn provide social data to large clients.

The company was previously partnered with most of the companies in the Plugged In To Gnip program, and this is the first time they’re highlighting those partners and creating a program to offer benefits. Gnip’s platform aggregates social media APIs, helping companies track and analyze brand mentions. As of September 2012 it was analyzing over 100 billion social activities per month.

“Over the last several years, the rate of adoption of social data across all kinds of business use cases…have evolved,” Gnip president and COO Chris Moody said in an interview. “There is broad recognition now that the quality of the analytics and the insights is only as good as the quality of the data.” Gnip now pulls from a variety of social data sources, including WordPress, Disqus, and Tumblr, who they announced a partnership with in April 2012. Moody said that they wanted to create the Plugged In to Gnip program to highlight companies’ involvement with Gnip’s data sources, and their commitment to “sustainable data,” meaning data that is compliant with each platform’s privacy settings.

“Plugged In at its heart is an acknowledgement and recognition on Gnip’s part of the companies that we’ve had longstanding relationships with…where we have compelling reason to believe that these are companies that are fully committed to the highest level of data integrity possible.”

He said partners in the program will get access to new data sources first, and eventually will get access to products that are only available to partners, which Moody says is the most compelling reason for companies to become data partners. While they have 14 initial partners, the company plans to add several more companies in the next few months.

The focus for Gnip moving forward will be on onboarding new partners, as well as continuing to add new data sources. Moody said the Historical PowerTrack product released in September has been a “complete game-changer” for the company, and they’ll likely be looking to offer those differentiated data sources to stand out versus other social API companies. “As we suspected it would, it’s opened up all these new uses across all these different entities, so it’s been an overwhelming response to that product.” With companies increasingly looking to build out enterprise-level intelligence and analytics monitoring for clients, Gnip will likely only continue to add partners who want to be the go-to source for monitoring.

Erin has covered startups and technology for over three years in publications including Sprouter Weekly, The Globe and Mail, Business Insider, Mashable, and VentureBeat. She also writes a regular startup column for the Financial Post, and is a technology expert on CTV News Channel. Before BetaKit Erin worked as Director of Content & Communications at Sprouter from its launch in 2009 until its acquisition by Postmedia Network Inc. She was recently named one of Marketing Magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2012.